No going back

I27

I always think it's really exciting when people...move...and I think that the key thing…[is] not necessarily to take them and show them exactly what to do, but [to show them] there's no going back. They're either going to win or they're going to fucking lose and I think that's an important position. To push people out to taking those risks that they wouldn't normally want to take and getting them to feel like that's their decision, feeling empowered, and then creating that contrast, and then there's no going back, you're pretty much taking a leap.

Outrage, movements, and institutionalization

I17

Protests, they get a lot of attention, but unless you have millions of people it's not going to amount to anything and one of the things governments have learned is that volunteers wear out eventually. You can't sustain a white-hot movement indefinitely without becoming an institution. So as soon as that happens you've lost the white-hot outrage that got you started….In order to have the kind of impact [you] want, [you] have to become something different then [you]...started out to be.

Turning the tide

I20

I guess what I keep hoping is that the people who are using the skills of working together, of growing food, making things, of connecting with people despite barriers and differences, that when there is an inevitable big shift in this particularly unsustainable political and economical world we live in...there will be enough of these to...turn the tide.

Practicing solidarity

I1

In the ‘80s and ‘90s, it was a debate around mass organizing versus propaganda of the deed and that was the way it was framed….I recall those debates throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s and I recall really sharply [that] the spokescouncil meetings leading up to the WTO in Seattle gathered different communities from the Pacific North-West, from Washington state, or Oregon, or BC and [they advanced] very different approaches. By that time, we had developed a fair amount of respect for each other...[and] many of those debates were had in pretty fraternal ways and played out better than maybe they have most recently.

The fetish of the local

I5

I don't want to be programmatic about it but I certainly think there's something to the anarchist vision of free federated collectivities that makes a lot of sense to me. But I also agree that that's utopian in some ways, in the sense that I think that we will not solve the crises we currently face by retreating to the local, and imagining the local as a space that we can create a little life boat, and by growing our food locally, and by having very nice community assemblies, and by trying to just retreat to this imagined space of hearth and home that we'll somehow escape what's coming because it's only in building lines of communication and solidarity that we'll do that. I think that that's part of what it would mean to win to me. I'm not interested in creating a world or being part of a project that creates a world that revels in parochialism.

Bunker mentalities

I24

I'm always quite surprised at the number of people that agree with you when you talk about how the system is not serving our interests and isn't really meeting the needs that we need to be met. I don't think that's the problem among the masses of people, I think the problem is that nobody is able to give them any direction to do anything about it. So people have this sort of bunker mentality, I look after myself, I'll do what I can for me and my family.

Organize where you are

I27

You have to organize where you are. If you go to high school, you organize high school students, you don't organize pensioners or something. If you're a...pensioner you organize other people who are like you, you organize your friends, you organize. And that's something that's really important, it's building those [struggles] link by link, person by person. So if you're doing environmental organizing...you're bringing a radical perspective that links that struggle to other struggles. People often come into being active or caring about certain things through particular...issues, right? Going through the process of gaining a political consciousness...usually centers around one thing and then hopefully there's people there who can make links between that one thing and a broader perspective of capitalism, a broader perspective of a whole range of things.

Indigenous knowledge

I7

You learn about history and all the really bad stuff that has happened, to the Indigenous population particularly, and I was like, wow, what keeps people motivated there?...if human society is going to get through what we're going through now, it's going to be because of the knowledge of indigenous peoples. I feel like there's that wealth of knowledge there that's just not tapped in the mainstream and it's the total opposite of the dominant culture.

Radical values

I6

I don't want to point to a specific example of an activist initiative and say that this is the guide to the future. My own feeling is that there are values that I think I'd like to see broadened to be values that people can work with. Things like solidarity, affinity, autonomy, cooperation over competition, these sorts of vague themes. And then there are various experiments with those which are sometimes inspiring, like cooperatives. Those sorts of things have those values in them.

Living collectively without the state

I19

I don't think we can get that far if we keep getting concessions from the state….What do I think is the way forward? I think...we have to be more creative about thinking collectively to get things done. Being able to imagine that it actually is possible that we can get things done without the state or whatever other institution it is that we're talking about.